“And this man in Vienna years ago, the man from San Francisco, what of him? You believe that he really had traveled in time? Like H. G. Wells,” he said.
“Yes, like H. G. Wells,” Eleanor said, smiling at the reference, “but with no time machine, and with no way to get back.”
Jung looked serious, giving the words some thought. “There was no way to return?” he said, and Eleanor nodded. “Did he die in Vienna?” he asked, and she nodded solemnly. “Were you with him?”
Eleanor did not answer. “It is strange,” she said after the moment’s pause, “he had long conversations with your Dr. Freud, all recorded with great care in the journal.” She paused again and pointed at the red leather volume open beside them. “Not unlike that book.”
“And what did Dr. Freud think of this remarkable man, this man from the future?”
“You know what he thought. You do not need to ask.”
“Dr. Freud thought him one of his hysterics,” Jung said with a slight smile. “He thought him mad.”
“You know that he would, and you know that he did. He would have had no other choice. He was, after all, Dr. Freud.” She returned his slight smile.
“Indeed. He would have had no other choice.”
“And what would you have thought?” Eleanor asked the obvious, point-blank.
Jung gave the question a respectful moment’s thought and then said with another slight smile, “I would have thought him a man from San Francisco…” He paused respectfully. “A man of music, a famous one, and from another time.”
A profound silence fell between them, and they only looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment, neither needing to speak. And Eleanor smiled finally, knowing that indeed her friend would have thought exactly that.
Suddenly, she stopped and broke the mood with a troubled look. “Now that you know of my Vienna experience, there is something I must share with you, about what you learned from Will Honeycutt.”
“Why? Is there something improper in that?”
“No. But it has started me thinking.” Her look did not change.
“I probably would have come to the idea on my own, in another way. But yes, I came upon the power of imaginary dialogue from your description of your friend.”
She paused, giving the idea a good deal of thought. “What that means is that I brought the idea, active imagination, as you now label it, with me from Vienna and told it to William James. Dr. James mentioned it in a lecture at Harvard, where Will Honeycutt picked up the idea and used it quite dramatically in his senior thesis.”
“He was ripe for the idea, in my view. He was being visited at night in his dreams and wished to explore those visitations. To gain some insight about himself perhaps.”
“Yes, he was ripe for the idea, granted, but the suggestion came from Dr. James. His dialogue with the ancient Greek Democritus caused quite a stir at Harvard because the scientific observations appeared to be uncannily accurate, coming from an unnatural or perhaps supernatural source, on levels far beyond what Mr. Honeycutt knew.”
“Or thought he knew,” Jung said. “Yes, I can believe that.”
“I told you about Mr. Honeycutt, and you were intrigued. I remember that. Now, you say that all this, your Red Book, as you call it, has grown out of my telling you about Will Honeycutt’s college thesis.”
“Yes, that is more or less accurate, although, as I said, I would have come to the technique in some other way, in time.”
She frowned again, thinking. “But you did come to it because of what I told you.”
“And is that so very bad?”
She must have paused then, pulling together all the strands. “It is not bad,” she said. “No. It’s just the nature of what I brought back from Vienna back then. It was not the usual kind of information, parapsychological, Dr. James would say. I had knowledge from the future, from the end of this century.”
Jung waited expectantly. “I can see now,” Eleanor continued, “that is what I learned then in the form of a conversation with Dr. Freud, what purported to be a real conversation, an argument, I think you would say.”
Jung now looked anxious. “Go on,” he said encouragingly.
“It is only now that it has occurred to me just where the material for that argument between Dr. Freud and the American came from. Dr. Freud argued his side in a way that I think you would say is consistent with his beliefs at the time, exactly what he would have said back in 1897, and probably would say even today, his defense, his dogged defense of the whole Oedipus complex.”
“And the other side?” Jung said almost breathlessly, sensing what was coming.
“The argument,” she said, “would be very familiar to you.”
“It is perhaps what I would have said to Dr. Freud?”
“Exactly,” Eleanor said. “And that is the part I am just beginning to comprehend.”
“This voice,” he said slowly. “This voice from the end of the century from this man from San Francisco is exactly what I would have said?”
“Yes,” she said softly, sensing what was coming next, what Jung was beginning to deduce. “But not just then.” She paused again, not certain if she should continue. “Over the course of your lifetime. He told me that the famous propriety of my Boston upbringing came from the tradition of the Puritans and the repression of an earthy, baser nature. He said that the Greeks worshipped the debauchery of Dionysus as well as the pure reason of Apollo, and that was good for them. All their gods and goddesses had a dark and venal side, and that was far more healthy than my famous propriety.”
“Yes, I believe that.”
“He said that all of us carried such a dark side within, the shadow, he called it. He said that if we did not confront that shadow in ourselves and our society, we would not arrive at what he called wholeness.”
“The shadow, yes, and wholeness. Those are what I believe also.”
“That is my point exactly,” Eleanor said. “That is what I am realizing.”
“The ideas are my ideas.” Eleanor nodded. “They were my ideas now, and perhaps extended over the next few decades, used back then to argue with Dr. Freud, to influence him?” Again a silent nod. “To get him to change his mind, vainly it turned out?”
“Yes,” she spoke now. “To exhort him to change his mind, to get him to retreat from his rigid adherence to the Oedipus idea. Just as you would have done then, and would most likely do now. But it was 1897, when you were still a university student, before you knew Dr. Freud.”
Both Eleanor and Jung sat quietly for a time, another profound silence falling between them. “The man from San Francisco, this man from the future, knew my ideas, had read my writings?”
“Yes,” Eleanor said, “I am beginning to see that.”
“And those ideas, through the circuitous route you describe, from you to William James to Will Honeycutt back to you to me, have come to inform my current work, my Red Book.”
“That is what I am realizing, only now.” There was a perplexed look on her face.
“Oh my,” Jung said. “This does get complicated. What you are saying is that I have educated myself.”
Eleanor nodded and another profound silence fell between them, another interminable moment. Carl Jung paused, reflecting. “And there is more,” he said finally.
“There is.”
“The journal foretells that you will live to be an old woman,” he said. Eleanor nodded. “You will be able to encounter this man from San Francisco as a young man.” She looked away but nodded silently. “And at the end of this century, after you and I are gone, he will travel backward in time again and meet you in Vienna.” She held her silence and continued to look down, then slowly brought her eyes up to meet his. “And that is the reason for all this,” Jung said finally.
“It is,” Eleanor said in no more than a whisper, looking into the intense, patient eyes of her friend.
“It is the reason for your unshakable faith, for your fundamentalism?”
41
“I AM HERR JODL”
So now she would be returning to Vienna, with her young son in tow, to find Arnauld Esterhazy. Jung had made the arrangements. She would travel by train. Franz Jodl, the retired policeman who had done the investigation into Arnauld’s fate, would meet her at the border. “Jodl is a former Viennese policeman, the interrogator of Italian prisoners of war, so he knows much about what transpired on the Italian front. As you can imagine, he is a little short of imagination perhaps, but highly responsible. Herr Jodl is a widower with two sons lost, one killed in the early days in Galicia, and one not heard from in the last months, one of the thousands of Austrian prisoners taken in the debacle at the end, one hopes.”
“He is not too severe?” Eleanor asked, shuddering for a moment thinking of her encounter with the Viennese police twenty years ago.
“He is a little stern perhaps,” Jung said. “But I think you will find him extremely loyal, and also very well connected. He knows his way around, I think you say in America. Money will change hands at all the important junctures, and you can trust him to handle that dimension. He understands his administrative duties in that regard. You will be in trustworthy hands. That is what is important.”
“He is the one who confirmed Arnauld’s death.”
“He is, but he knows the task,” Jung said. “For you, Arnauld is still alive. He knows not to argue but to share your conviction. He knows that is the only way.”
The trip would be long, the food scarce. She would carry with her a large steamer trunk filled with provisions Jung had procured with the supply of American dollars she had made accessible from the Hyperion Fund’s Swiss bank account.
“Frau Jung has packed some entertainments for young Standish,” the doctor said. “There are some books and coloring sheets that have entertained our children well.”
“Thank you,” she said, noting a look of concern on her host’s face. “You and Frau Jung are wondering why I brought him, aren’t you?”
“No,” he said. “I understand that you thought him old enough for such an adventure, but there is more.”
Eleanor looked at him expectantly. “And that is?”
“You want him to see all this,” Jung said. “You are training him to be a hero.”
“Oh my,” Eleanor said. “That is grand.” Then she added sadly, “I suppose I am preparing him for his destiny, though it is not what I would have chosen for him.”
Jung gave her a curious look, then one of understanding. “Part of what you know,” he said, “your faith.”
She nodded, then said, “Part of all this is very selfish, of course. I wanted my son with me. Standish is an easy traveling companion, because he loves being read to, and there is plenty of time for that, train schedules being irregular as they are right now.”
“You will have to be patient,” Jung said as he laid all the papers and tickets and maps on the table.
“You are an excellent travel agent,” she said. “I thank you.”
In the morning, Eleanor and Standish said good-bye to Emma and each of the children at the door of the Jungs’ house. “You will have a safe journey,” Emma said, “and the children wish very much for Standish’s return.” The children all nodded, and one of them stepped forward and gave the young man a full embrace.
“Yes, we do,” they seemed to say in unison. “We wish Standish to return.”
Toni Wolff did not appear for the good-bye.
He took his guests to the train station in downtown Zurich and saw that Eleanor’s two trunks were properly checked in, and then on the platform outside their car he held her for a long moment, she allowing herself the rare reassurance in her friend’s large, vibrant embrace.
“I shall be traveling with you,” he said, releasing her. “Strength when you need it.”
“Strength when I need it,” she repeated.
“You will do just fine,” he said. “Your animus is strong.”
Carl Jung stood outside their train window until the train pulled away. He waved, and both Eleanor and her son waved back.
She felt suddenly, for the first time perhaps, as if she was off on the first leg of an adventure, a very uncertain one.
The trip through the mountains was long and slow. They reached the Swiss-Austrian border in the late afternoon preparing to cross the Rhine at the little town of Lustenau. She asked the conductor of the Swiss train, “What do we do now?”
“I do not know,” he said, a bit imperious in the Swiss manner, making obvious his assessment of the conditions she was about to face. “You will be in the hands of the Austrians.”
It became obvious that the Swiss train was not going to continue, and all passengers disembarked. When they stepped down from the train car, she looked up and down the platform for the contracted guide Carl Jung had said would be waiting. Suddenly, a man stepped into her path. “You are Frau Burden, I believe,” he said in a brusque German accent.
“I am,” she said, and pulled her son toward her.
“I am Herr Jodl,” he said. “Dr. Jung in Zurich has arranged for me to meet you.” He held out his hand.
Franz Jodl was an erect and formal man in his early sixties, carefully dressed and restrained in his posture and movements.
They stood together on the chilly station platform at Lustenau for some time, the discomfort of unfamiliarity evident in both. From this point in the Rhine Valley they could see the Alps rising on both sides, and they were aware of the change just having crossed the border, the train station showing signs of neglect, paint peeling, a few windows cracked, a look of deprivation in the eyes of the railroad personnel around them. What a contrast, she thought of saying to Standish beside her, just one large river separating the two worlds, one neutral and the other fully in the grip of war.
“We will be attended to in a moment,” the former Viennese policeman said, keeping a respectful distance.
After the awkward silence had fallen between the new colleagues, an Austrian official emerged from the station office and asked everyone to form a line. A number of similarly shabbily dressed officials came and joined him and sat at tables where they intended to interview each of the travelers.
Soldiers obviously new to their jobs, recently released from war, it turned out, stood awkwardly by as the customs officers opened suitcases and trunks and examined goods. Eleanor’s papers from the Swiss embassy were supposed to explain the unusually full trunk, but Jodl’s authoritative style interceded to prevent the guards from riffling through the contents.
Finally, aware of the stern authoritative attention of Herr Jodl, the border guards sealed the trunks and allowed them to pass and board the trains.
The change from Swiss to Austrian trains was a rude shock. It did not take long to see in the difference what had happened to the once-grand empire. The guards had dogs which barked loudly but, like their masters, looked thin and unfed. The train cars themselves were in ill repair: leather seats slashed and crudely repaired, window shades that didn’t work, windows cracked or broken. Some of the cars smelled of iodine from only recently having carried the wounded back from the front. Eleanor suppressed a shudder as she did her best not to imagine the bloody scene.
“This, like all of Austria, is not the same as you remember perhaps, Frau Burden,” Jodl said, “but it will take us to Vienna. Quite a difference from your previous visit, which Herr Jung has explained to me. There is not much left of the empire and its splendor.”
“It is quite all right, Herr Jodl,” she said, sitting upright in her train seat, pulling young Standish close. “You will not need to keep reminding me. I am quite capable of adjusting to existing conditions.”
42
CITY OF GHOSTS
Vienna was almost unrecognizable. Of course, the tall, elegant marble façades of the grand buildings of the Ringstrasse for which Vienna at the end of the century had been renowned were unchanged, a
nd the coffeehouses were still open, but all liveliness and vitality were gone. Nowhere to be seen on the wide Ringstrasse was the elegance she remembered: the handsome men in dark coats and top hats, the finely adorned women in long dresses with tightly corseted waists and well-defined poitrines, or the workers hurrying off carrying lunch boxes. And if there were military officers on the scene, their uniforms seemed frayed and worn and without medals and embellishments. Rather than loitering on display, soldiers hurried past without wishing to be noticed. Those who were out wandered the broad streets of the Ring as if in a daze. “There is almost nothing left of the old gaiety and bustle of our fabled city,” Jodl had said, repeating his theme. “It is a great sadness.” Eleanor felt like a visitor among ghosts.
The city that she entered was now struggling for its very survival, now fully aware that the war had been a disaster and the exuberance for it a cruel folly. In the summer of 1914, only four years before, as Arnauld had written, the city was still electric, overflowing with the power and energy of empire, the thrill of going to war. Then, in almost no time, Arnauld wrote, almost as soon as the bodies started coming back from the Russian front, it all began coming apart.
The fall of the great city and the dissolution of the empire, like the war’s end, had come with a great suddenness. After the old emperor died in 1916, as the war was dragging on, suddenly, with the armistice in 1918, the empire disbanded and the economy collapsed. The new emperor, the scantily prepared grandnephew of Franz Joseph and younger nephew of the assassinated Franz Ferdinand, had decreed that Austria-Hungary would become a loose confederation of republics. But none of those—not the Czechs, Slavs, Hungarians, Poles, Croatians, Slovenians, or Italians—paid him much attention. They simply ceased their homage to the empire and went their separate ways, taking their life-sustaining natural resources with them. Within weeks of the end of hostilities in the fall of 1918, each of the separate states simply stopped saluting the imperial flag, and Vienna was left without access to the essential imports of fresh produce, meat, coal, and firewood that had fueled the capital city’s magnificence for hundreds of years.
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